


Sounds Orlesian

by AntivanCrafts



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, based upon a prompt from the kinkmeme for an older male inquisitor that grumps at everything, had enough fun with it i figured i'd repost it here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 04:09:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8734366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntivanCrafts/pseuds/AntivanCrafts
Summary: Arla Lavellan is pushing sixty, as well as the limits of his patience.





	

Arla slouched further into the ridiculous chair the shemlan seemed bound and determined to force him into, willing or not, and let his head loll down onto his chest so that he wouldn't have to look at Josephine's hopeful expression anymore. "If I have to listen to your barbarian tongues wag through this ritual one more time," he snapped in a true, thick dalish brogue, "I will find the highest vault in this castle and fling myself into the creators' bosom."

"All I got out of that was bosom," said one of them, the man who played at being a hunter, with his pelt that he had most certainly not earned, not properly, and Arla propped his chin up on the least offensive of his palms and, upon rolling his eyes, allowed them to settle upon Cullen.

"That is more than I care to understand of yours, templar," he said, because he may not have understood very much about human society, the whys and the wherefores and the who-set-fire-to-whom, but that, that he did understand.

He raised a hand when Cullen went to respond, and looked instead to Leliana. "You. You say you took a dalish as your lover," he said, then, without waiting for a response, continued, "I am sure you called them all manner of pretty names to their face. Trust me when I say that we have even more names for those who take the elvhen to be their own, and they are not so pretty."

"Perhaps," she said smoothly, "but you are assuming a great deal about the nature of the relationship."

"You'll find I do that," Arla said, just this side of a mutter, his eyes slipping down and to the side to Dorian, who seemed to have taken it upon himself to translate, excepting that his translations were no more helpful than the original verse, not with that confounded Tevene accent of his. Ah, no, Arla hadn't forgotten /that/, either, nor the insults he had suffered at Cassandra and Solas's hands. Somehow or other, he was expected to play follow the tail with a gaggle of arguing children, all of whom seemed even more intent on irritating him within an inch of his life than they had been on forcing him into this chair.

He shifted uncomfortably, finding himself wishing for the comfortable pelts that lined the camp sets back in his home camp. Unfortunately, Josephine took it to be a sign of weakness and hastened to ask a further litany of questions. He was getting a headache listening to accent after accent, all foreign to him and to each other. He'd thought the thrice yearly festivals were a riot of words and opinions, but he had not once considered a shemlan army. And such it was, no matter how they chose to drape the trappings of religion upon it, and oh, how that just made it /worse/. He well remembered what had happened the last time the chantry had marched, and the thought of leading its banner put a sour taste in his mouth.

"Enough!" He snapped, interrupting the conversation that had erupted around him, each adviser's voice flowing over and around each other when he had to struggle to understand the common tongue at the best of times. He pushed himself up out of the chair and down the short set of steps, two at a time. "Enough of your prattle, all of you! I cannot think with all of this confounded noise!"

His thick, once magnificently blue-black but now greying braid snapped taut over his shoulder as he hurried down the winding stair to the courtyard, past whispering men and women and nonbinary folk alike. And oh! The words the shemlan used for each other, how was he to show the proper respect to his brethran of the mind without knowing the words they used?

There, at least, he knew his answer, and turned his steps to the tavern. He supposed he'd been expected to be confused as to its purpose, but the familiar sighs and smells of a brewery were impossible to mistake. He did have to admit, if only privately, that he was most comfortable there, as opposed to anywhere the inquisition would probably have preferred he rest his feet. He understood himself better, there, understood what was expected of him and what to expect. It reminded him keenly of home, in fact, of celebrations after a successful hunt, and once inside he settled himself beside the fire, where the Bull's chargers had made their home.

Without looking up, he raised a single, scarred finger. "If you call me your worship, boy, you're going to find yourself out of a job."

"I wouldn't dare," Krem said agreeably, kicking back an armored foot to brace beneath Arla's chair, offering him a footrest he was not too proud to accept. "There something you'd prefer? Can't keep calling you nothing at all, it'd create confusion, you see."

"That word the Bull used for you," Arla said by way of answering the question, "the one that means that you know yourself as different than the way you were first seen."

"Aqun-Athlok?"

"Yes, that. I like it."

"You want to be called Aqun-Athlok?"

"And why not? I know myself, far better than any of those outside seem to know me. At least there is word that feels familiar, even if the form of it is not. But, no." He shook his home. "Home. Arla. I know my home, as do you. That shall have to be enough for now."

"It could be more than enough," Krem offered after a comfortable silence stretched on just that bit too long, "if you tried to-"

"Oh, aye," Arla smiled. "Understand things from their point of view? How well does that typically work out for you?"

"-learn the lay of the land," Krem continued after only the briefest hesitation. They'll think you ignorant if you do not, and that can be very dangerous."

Arla briefly considered this idea, then discarded it, a notion that was helped at least in part by the sight of The Iron Bull's metal clad foot settling atop Krem's leg beside his, earning an exaggerated groan. "The way you're going about it will probably end up getting you killed, boss," Bull said cheerfully, earning a scowl that was more good natured than not. "Whether that happens fast or slow depends upon who you choose to trust."

Arla looked right back at Bull, and he smiled.


End file.
